A Fine Place to Discuss a Case
by TheMannMan
Summary: Everyone's favorite Edgeworth gets called out to discuss the upcoming trial. As usual, he arrives early. Can he manage to patiently wait for his appointment without murdering everyone near him? A fic with Edgeworth in places he wouldn't be caught dead in.
1. The Dance Club

Miles Edgeworth hated these kinds of places. It seemed to him nothing but a breeding ground for all forms of depravity. In the middle of the room, people were wriggling around like worms who had, by some evolutionary catastrophe, managed to walk upright. He was willing to bet that about 85 of them were drunk out of their minds, while the rest were only drunk enough to be halfway there. The great source of the stuporing substance was forever crowded with those looking to either lose themselves in the various concoctions supplied, or to lose others for the benefit of their inebriated entertainment. The floor was sticky with various drinks, gum, and other things he wish he hadn't seen to begin with, much less identify. He was sincerely scared as to what he would find in the bathrooms. The bright flashing lights, flickering on and off to blind him again and again in the dark room, together coupled with the big bang booming music that rendered him deaf on a consistent basis, served only to give him a headache the instant he walked in. Throughout his stay, he had worn a scowl that he had perfected over the course of his years, hoping to scare everyone else off but the one who had so foolishly called him here. Though, of course, a few idiots had tried to penetrate his aura of distaste.

There was the one woman, obviously bored, who tried to start up conversation with him. Edgeworth, of course, could barely hear this woman for the life of him, and winced at each time he did, as it was certainly louder than whatever decibel level the music was playing at. She left after she had tried unsuccessfully to get him to utter more than a curt nods and scowls. There was also the two people he hadn't known, and wished never to know again, who tried to get him to dance with another woman at the bar. He did not know why there were cajoling him so, nor did he wish to find out, and thus set himself to ignore them until they went away. Which they did.

The hardest part, though, came when one clearly inebriated man began to "hit on him," as his peers said. Despite Edgeworth's strongest methods of shutting down any sort of communication, the man continued to make advances toward him, saying things which might have sounded more appropriate had they come out of the mouth of a similarly intoxicated ape. It got to the point where Miles had to use his voice, well versed on the prosecutor's bench, to silence the man and send him off. This tactic, however, turned against him as the man got angry. The man began to verbally assault Edgeworth in kind, which turned from snide remarks about Edgeworth's dark red suit, black dress shirt, and white frilled collar to disparaging comments about his mother within a matter of minutes. Miles had heard much worse in the courtroom, though, so he remained unfazed, much to the drunk man's dismay. It was thus that the man thought to smash a nice glass bottle on the table and to proceed and attack Edgeworth.

Three seconds later, the poor drunken man was on the floor, clutching his abdomen, groaning about rejected feelings or something pathetic like that. Shaking his hand out from the blow, Edgeworth decided that he had had enough of this dismal place, important case meeting or not. He stormed out of his personal level of hell and stomped his way over to the classy bright red sedan that was his car. As he was unlocking the door, he heard the voice of the person who had called him. Giving her the fiercest glare he could muster, he extended his pinky and his thumb and arranged them to fit over his ear and mouth. Without further communication, he slammed the door shut and drove off. A fine place to meet, indeed.


	2. Wackyworld

At first, Miles Edgeworth was incredulous that this could ever be a suitable location to discuss such a thing as murder. It was a ridiculous notion; one that not only made no sense, but was also incredibly inconvenient. An hour afterwards, he was astonishingly certain that he had been absolutely right.

Why on** earth** did Mrs. Steele ask to meet him at Wackyworld's Orbital Coaster?

It was taking all of the mental energy that Edgeworth had to keep him there in that spot. Typical carnival music was blaring loudly out of the speakers, wasting valuable neurons in his brain by their eventual memorization of these mind numbing tunes. The only reason he could even hear the damned 'music' was because its decibel level was high enough to be just that bit louder than the hundreds of thousands of lemmings that were busy 'enjoying' themselves here.

Private vendors forever roamed around the park, peddling their idiotic wares. They consistently fell into two distinctive categories: The first contained brightly colored balloons, trinkets, books and clothing that all featured at least one licensed cartoon character upon them. The second was made up of food that, if sold at any other place in the world, would have already been confiscated, burned, and exorcised by whatever national health department happened to have jurisdiction.

The 'stores' around him were just extensions of these shabby little carts. They were filled to the brim with plush animals, dolls and toys designed to appeal to all customers who decided to enter (aside from him, of course). Every counter was packed, and Edgeworth winced each time he heard the cash register ringing up yet another charge. Every wall and every stand in these shops sold were so full of caricatured junk that Edgeworth, had he not known better, would have thought that the business was run by mere children.

And oh, the little devil children that ran through this 'park'!

Normally he would have been grateful for any excuse to not hear the whimsical tunes blaring from the carefully concealed audio devices around the place, but his only alternative, unfortunately, was the shrill crying of the munchkins as they moved from one plastic-filled cart ride to the next. Manners were nothing to them. They pushed, they shoved, they crowded their way to wherever it was they had decided to go, and battered and exhausted parents tried in vain to keep pace. Edgeworth, standing off to the side, was free of this sea of people, though the way it imitated a stampede of wild beasts irked him to a considerable degree. These people were capable of so much more than such an animalistic drive.

At the mark of his second hour of waiting (and the mark of when his rendezvous was an hour and a half late) Edgeworth sighed, put on the greatest scowl he could muster, and began to forge through the oncoming crowd. Strangely, like the Red Sea, they all parted to allow him passage.

It hadn't taken much to get from where he was to First Avenue, the street lined of stores filled with more of the same junk sold everywhere else. It was the first thing everyone saw and had to go through to get anywhere in the park from the gate. That meant that it hit any and all comers immediately with the cartoon merchandise and junk food. Foot traffic was flowing only opposite the direction Miles wished to go, yet his pervading aura of loathing for the place seemed to create an invisible bubble of space around him, much like a rock caught in rapids. This entire trip had, yet again, been a waste of time. Why couldn't that blasted woman pick a normal place, like his office, or her office, or, if he wanted to be **really** 'out there,' a café of some kind? At least, he reflected, not a single person had tried to strike up conversation during his stay in this miserable hell.

"Hu-hey, buddy! Turn that frown upside down, huh?"

He was sure of it now. Heaven and hell and all the powers that be hated him and would stop at nothing to see him suffer eternally.

Standing before him was a jolly kangaroo, the mascot of Wackyworld. 'Jumpy' was certainly living up to his name, as the man inside the suit hopped happily from one long, narrow, padded foot to the other. His body was large and fluffy, with a wide pouch around the midsection, out of which sprouted such an assortment of teeth-rotting sweets that any passing dentist would have fainted on the spot. The head was obnoxiously large as well; a long nose protruding from the base of the mask and adorned with two gigantic, bulging blue eyes. The crowning of this jolly fellow was covering his hands: Two boxing gloves, each with a little smiley face on the back of them, clapped together occasionally in falsified mirth.

It was the greatest disfigurement of nature he had ever seen.

"I prefer to present the truth rather than a fantasy illusion," Edgeworth snapped, "Perhaps it's a bad habit of mine, but it won't be one you'll change."

"Aw, gee whiz!" the giant kangaroo said in what was the most ungodly goofy voice the world had ever known, hopping merrily and irritatingly in Edgeworth's way, "Why can't we be friends, pal?"

Edgeworth started storming down one side of the lane. "Because you are an idiotic creature who is better off tormenting some other soul than my own!"

"Come on, buddy! Give me a big hug!" The great creature was relentless in its pursuit, and Edgeworth knew if he stopped, it would be a fate worse than death itself.

Edgeworth didn't like using underhanded tactics, but as his pace increased to escape the oncoming monster he realized that it was either a small piece of his honor or a large chunk of his dignity. "Look!" he called, pointing across the street, "A small cluster of children in need of product advertising!"

"Where?!" called the kangaroo, in a shockingly gruff and masculine voice, as he turned his head to see where the bounty would lie. As he did so, his limited vision lost sight of the oncoming lamppost, into which he collided most painfully. As Golaith fell before David, so did Jumpy fall, crashing to the ground in what was probably the world's most epic squeaky noise. Edgeworth almost went deaf from it.

Noting that his pursuer was laying stone cold on the floor, Miles took the opportunity to stand over his fallen prey. Kicking him a little bit to ensure his lack of awareness, Miles said two words that he felt were only appropriate for the situation.

"Take that."

Edgeworth smirked triumphantly over his trophy, overhearing a little demon exclaim, "Mommy! Mommy! Jumpy's dead!" Though he was not vengeful, he certainly was fond of revealing the truth of all things. As thus, the opportunity presented itself for him to kick the mask off and reveal the face of quite the unsuspecting Will Powers underneath.

As the children's mob ran from the giant man's unconscious face for fright, Edgeworth easily walked out of the gate and to his car. As he started up the engine and began to navigate the maze of automobiles, he sent one simple message to Mrs. Steele on his phone.

_I object to your moronic locations. We may either discuss this matter privately at someplace more fitting or I will drag everything out of you, detail by painstaking detail__, in the courtroom__ I much prefer the courtroom, but the choice is yours._

As he was writing it, the person driving in front of him spontaneously slammed on their brakes. Miles, registering it a second too late, ended up rear-ending the car in front of him. Growling at how great his day was going he opened the door and stared at the driver of the garishly green convertible ahead of him.

He should have been shocked, but after all that had happened in the past two days he was perfectly unsurprised with this. In the car was a woman, not older than twenty-five, with long metal-gray hair and a similarly colored suit on. She looked up at Miles in shock and surprise. "O-Oh! Mister Edgeworth! I'm sorry I'm late, I had to takeoutthetrashandthenmycatMittensgotsicksoIhadtotakehertothevetIwouldhavecalledbutmyphonewasdeadandthenthisrabbithoppedoutinfrontofmycarand…"

He left her in the middle of her rambling and got back into his sedan. Spinning the wheels 'round, he drove around the car and out of the lot, ignoring her protests while they still reached his ears. As he got onto the relative safety of the highway he leaned back in his chair and sighed a tired sigh.

A fine place to meet, indeed.


	3. Anicomekomanac

Edgeworth knew this was ridiculous. He knew it the instant that that blasted woman had told him. He had sixty four sixty fifths of a mind to tell her to rot in hell, yet, for whatever reason, that last part of him had agreed to come here, to the Turnaboutopolis Convention Center. 

Right in the middle of their Anicomekomanac convention.

At first glance, he had thought that Halloween had somehow rolled around without his notice. There were thousands of people dressed in possibly every style that had been made and would ever be made. Yet, somehow, all of the outfits managed to look absolutely ridiculous on every single one of the masqueraders. There were bright green jumpsuits, black leather outfits covered in enough spikes to kill a man, samurai robes (a **lot **of these), bikinis (both women **and** men), suits designed to resemble various pieces of fruit, even some people just covered in body paint. Each person's hair seemed to be a different color, as well, from naturally blonde to a horrendous shade of neon green. Props and accessories jutted out from every direction as well, whether they be samurai swords (what was **with** all the samurai here?) or shields or gigantic jars. It got to the point where everybody became a distinct blur in the sea of weaponry and pottery.

And this was merely the line to the ticket counter.

_Those suits probably loo__ked better on their models than __on them,_ Edgeworth thought, as he went inside.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was nice enough of Mrs. Steele to mail him an extra ticket. He wasn't quite sure he could have made it through the line without, at minimum, having to backhand someone. Then again, he had this same uncertainty in the center, but he at least had more ground to get away should the need arise.

The huge room had been decorated from top to bottom in posters, balloons, and stands, each displaying one illustrated figure after another. As Edgeworth wandered the halls, searching for his appointment, he saw that each shelf seemed to carry the same thing over and over again: Figurines, posters, shirts, and other various useless trinkets, each imprinted with more and more caricatured art. Eyebrow twitching as he passed a stand devoted to Jumpy, he rounded the corner and turned on the row with the highest ink concentration in the city.

Down this hall were boxes upon boxes filled with comics of all kinds. To his right, the smaller American comics were printed, each depicting some human-like figure in brightly colored underwear staring menacingly at another human-like figure in undergarments that were merely a bit darker in shading. Picking one up out of curiosity, he leafed through to the end, where the villain has the hero tied up on a ferris wheel that is speeding towards the city, on fire, on course to collide with an atomic bomb, which would signal a submarine to shoot missiles at the White House, etc. With the final words of the issue in his head ("You'll never get away with this, Airplane Smoke Detector Tamperer!" "I'd like to see you stop me, Flight Attendant Man!") Edgeworth picked up the next issue and skipped to the end once more. As expected, the hero had failed to catch the villain in the end ("I can't believe he got away! We left him right by the entrance to the fairground and told him to **stay put**, and he just runs! He's a crafty one, that Tamperer…."), and Edgeworth suspected each and every single issue here of following the same routine. In an attempt to ease monotony, he headed down the left side of the aisle.

It was hardly better, though, in the foreign comics section. Judging from the saucer-plate eyes, commonplace DD-cups, and interestingly colored hair, he could only assume that the majority of these "graphic novels" were made in Japan and translated over. He hoped dearly that at least their plots would be of better quality.

The first section he came across was the section marked "Shounen" (_If you're going to translate the entire book, why don't you translate one word of a sign? _he thought). The cover of the book he picked up depicted one shirtless, incredibly muscular man, his hair spiked more than Wright's, yelling at some other shirtless, muscular, humanoid alien of some kind. The issue seemed to start right at the beginning of their fight, as they began their pre-combat banter ("I will defeat you!" "And you will lose!" "You are the one who is going to lose!"). Skimming farther along, the human man had apparently finished powering himself up ("I am now ten times stronger than I was before!" "That's not possible!"), followed subsequently by a few pages of the two doing nothing but staring each other down. Skipping to the end, he found that neither side had done anything but taunt each other and increase their own strength. While the finishing lines were promising ("Are you ready for this?" "Bring it on!"), he could see the following two characters on the covers of at least the next twelve books in the series. He quickly moved on.

He decided it was better for his health if he skipped the "Shoujo" section, as a few hundred teenage girls were practicing their Long Range Irritation skills with ridiculous squealing.

It was when he passed by the "Yaoi" section that he made his biggest mistake.

Mrs. Steele had said in the letter sent with the ticket that the place she was most likely to be was this area. Unsure of what exactly this entailed, he decided he would gather as much information as he could about her interests, as he certainly wasn't getting anywhere by talking to her.

Strolling over to the box, he couldn't really find anything that distinguished this section from any of the others. Out of curiosity, he picked up an issue to examine it closely.

And he might as well have turned to stone.

On the front cover were two men. This would have been normal had they not been…with the chains…and the ball gag…and could a human body actually **do** that? Was one of the men related to a horse? Did the other have a tail and cat ears? How could this be published without raising some **incredible** red flags about the author's state of mind?

"Hello, sir. I see you're interested in "Fox Boy Passion Forbidden Boy Love Paradise 15". Would you like to purchase a copy?"

_**"TAKE THAT!"**_

…Edgeworth shouted, throwing the perversion of paper and ink in sales clerk's face. Deciding he would be better off somewhere very far away from this part of the convention, he stormed off toward a stand with a gigantic metal dragon.

He didn't even **want** to know why there were so many people at the section labeled "Futanari."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edgeworth came to a rest next to the concession stand in the back of the hall, after determining it to be one of the only safe places to be. Earlier, he had unknowingly wandered over to an area deemed only for what the kids there kept calling "Larp." Someone had wandered over to him, exclaiming what the poor boy probably thought was a magical incantation but which Edgeworth had overheard was a popular line on a science fiction program. The boy then exclaimed that he had casted a lightning spell, and that he had "rolled a critical twenty" against Miles. Edgeworth then took the opportunity to explain to the boy the reasons why he should go outside more.

Now, sipping a small glass of water (for which he paid five dollars), he decided that he would just hope that Mrs. Steele would pass him by. He had had enough of this crazy place, and desperately wanted out of it. Waiting around near a safe place was a lot better than wandering through dangerous territory.

Nearby was a booth promoting some long time artist, accompanied by a substantial amount of worshippers. Two false samurai were having a mock duel next to that, which was so badly orchestrated that even Edgeworth, with no training whatsoever, could distinctly point out the flaws in technique.

To the right of that, they had a large stage set up, in which they were awarding the best Halloween costumes. Miles gagged on his water when the winner was none other than Detective Dick Gumshoe in a schoolgirl's outfit too small for any self-respecting female. Two possibilities were then open to him: should he use this as blackmail against the "good detective" at some point in the future, or should he bar Gumshoe from coming within three miles of him ever again? Or, a third thought surfaced, both?

As he was deliberating, though, he was rudely bumped into. Edgeworth would normally have a particular scowl (#4) for a situation like this, but all of his usual tactics went out the window once he got a look at his offender.

Standing a bit shorter was a man dressed exactly like him. Red suit, red pants, black vest, white shirt, frilly cravat…the works. However, he wasn't performing what one would call exact mimicry. The hair was a bit messed up, the shade of it a bit too light, his footwear consisted of orange tennis shoes, and his face was much too cheerful to ever possibly be Edgeworth's. The other man was just as stunned as him, it seemed, but reacted faster than Miles could. "Hey…great Edgeworth costume! I didn't expect many people to cosplay as him. I mean, he's really not that popular, and if you ask me, kind of a grouch…"

_**"HOLD IT!"**_

Edgeworth slammed one hand on the wall behind him. "I assure you, I am **not **in any sort of costume! Now, if you'll just…"

"Oh!" the unfortunate man said, "Oh, right, gotta be in character and all. Um…"

_"OBJECTION!"_

_A mediocre objection, at best, _thought Edgeworth, _It's just not…'bold' enough._

"I-If you're not in costume, then you are indirectly insinuating that I must be! But I can assure you, **I** am the real Miles Edgeworth! Do you have any proof to your claim?"

_Much too aggressive…_

_**"OBJECTION!"**_

"I could ask you the same question." Edgeworth retorted. "Where is **your** proof that you are the real Miles Edgeworth?"

"Right here!" the man said with an arrogant smirk, hands on his hips. _**Way**__ too much like Wright._

_"TAKE THAT!"_

What he handed Edgeworth would have been an embarrassment had it been drawn when the artist was in kindergarten. On an index card, in crayon, was a poorly drawn imitation of Edgeworth's face, with a childish mean face scribbled in. The rest of the card merely had his name in incredibly poor handwriting, spelled "Myls Ejeworf."

Miles stared at it in utter disbelief before ripping it in half.

_"H-HOLD IT!"_

"That was my only ID card! Why'd you tear it up?"

_**"OBJECTION!"**_

"Your card is nothing but an embarrassing school project!"

_**"TAKE THAT!"**_

And when Edgeworth pulled out his ID card, to show that the real Miles Edgeworth did stand up, the poor cosplayer fainted on the spot.

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He had had enough. Two hours in that blasted center and his blood pressure had escalated to levels behind human comprehension. He no longer cared if Mrs. Steele was waiting for him in there; he merely had to find some way to communicate with her that didn't involve being face to face. _Perhaps carrier pigeon…_, he thought, as he got into his car and drove out of the parking lot.

Nearby, a metal-gray haired woman was loading up all of her swag from the treasure cove that was the Amicomekomanac convention. "I can't believe I got Fox Boy Passion Forbidden Boy Love Paradise 15!" she said to herself, "They only had one in stock!"

As she was putting her newly-gotten booty into car, she noticed a red sedan pulling out of the parking lot. Quickly realizing who it was, she began waving her arms in the air and shouting for Mr. Edgeworth to please stop. She failed to remember, however, her precious collection as it fell out of her arms and into a nearby puddle of oil.

Her curse could be heard for miles.

Speaking of Miles, he too heard Mrs. Steele's cry as he turned onto the highway. Thinking it nothing but some rabid fan prattling on about collector's value, he relaxed into his chair and sighed, trying to get himself relaxed for the drive home.

A fine place to meet, indeed.


	4. Bleindend Scayls Intl

Miles Edgeworth discreetly spat onto the asphalt at his feet and watched as it sizzled in the noonday sun. It was hot. Too hot. And unfortunately, he would have to brave the heat in order to get to the Bleindend Scayls Turnaboutopolis International Airport.

Why had he come here again? Oh, yes, that's right, because that blithering twit Mrs. Steele had apparently used all of the carrier pigeons he had sent her as target practice for her new bolt-action rifle. The same with the mailman, he had heard. And seeing as how none of his e-mails or calls had gotten through, he assumed that she had done the same thing with her computer and telephone. And if she had done all of that, he reasoned, it was definitely not a good thing to try and visit her at her house. As such, he had no choice but to rely on the various messages that she would send him, setting a time and place to meet.

The latest one came with a photo of her beaming brightly, holding her precious firearm, and a large pile of Edgeworth's avian friends behind her. He decided it was in his best interest if he went along with what she asked…even if he had to take a plane to get there.

Muttering made-up curses under his breath, he trudged through the maze of parked cars and melting asphalt to the relative comfort of the airport terminal.

--

_"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are experiencing technical difficulties with our air conditioning system. It will not be functioning for at least the next three hours. We apologize for the inconvenience."_

_God damn it._

Miles Edgeworth was close to losing his cool. Disregard that. He had already lost it. Standing in the check-in line for a half hour, in a room filled to the brim with **people**, with sunlight pouring in from the glass wall behind him, had turned him from a Slightly Miffed Miles Edgeworth into a Really Irritated Miles Edgeworth. The temperature inside had risen to incredible levels. Furthermore, for the past fifteen minutes, he had been listening to the people around him engage in an idiotic quote fight. One of them, quite innocently (as most horrors are unleashed) asked his friend how hot he thought it was in the building. His friend had responded, "It's over NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAND!" The response, in turn, came from a middle-aged man who, displaying his newborn son, said, "This baby can take temperatures up to nine-thousand degrees." Pretty soon, the whole line was in on it, and they were having a jolly old time.

The whole line except, of course, Mr. Edgeworth. Having to listen to the other people was, to him, like a cheese grater scraping the parts of his brain that weren't already aching from the dehydration.

In one act of divine semi-mercy, he was finally called to the counter to check his bag. The ruckus of the plebes was still very audible, though at least he was sure that he wasn't stuck in some interminable hell from which there was no escape.

"Hello there, sir!" said one Maggey Byrde from behind the counter.

Miles Edgeworth blinked twice in surprise. "Mrs. Byrde? I thought you were working for NASA?"

Maggey hung her head in shame. "Well I **was**…but, y'know? You mix up ONE wire, and it causes the booster rocket to fall off before being launched. And then it launches that rocket right into the museum hall. You would think that they would come up for some sort of failsafe for that, wouldn't you?"

_Their failsafe is __**supposed**__ to be the skill of the staff…_ "I can only hope I never have such an experience. So, you moved to working for Gohtja Airlines after that?"

"No, first I went to work as a tutor for someone at the university. I had to leave **that** pretty quickly. The guy was…really creepy. Kept asking about my underwear. My bad luck seems to follow me everywhere…"

"For your sake and mine, it better keep away for the next twenty minutes. I'm checking in today."

Maggey snapped her head up, excited. "Oh, of course sir! Right away!"

--

Really Irritated Miles Edgeworth was quickly turning into a Very Frustrated Miles Edgeworth.

The heat had gotten so bad in the terminal that he could no longer wear his usual attire inside. Already he had had to remove his suit coat, his cravat, and his fancy black vest. He was very upset at the cravat. No one would fear and respect him as a prosecutor without it. However, the fear and respect of a Very Frustrated Miles Edgeworth was quickly making up for it.

Added to this was that he had spent nearly forty seven minutes in the damned security line, with all of the gruff, sweating idiots crowding him, having to walk his luggage two steps every minute so he could keep the madness at bay, and that the gods had decided to place an elderly woman who was confused as to the necessity of a ticket to board a plane **right** in front of him, and one can only wonder how his blood pressure hadn't killed him yet.

He was close…so very close…just through this point would be the terminal. And then he would be free to wait, hopefully in a place farther away from the sun and from all of these godforsaken **people** who were **still** in the middle of their quote fight. But of course, it could never be that easy. This woman was not only hard of hearing; she had a very loose grasp of the English language as well. _Looser than any of the claims Wright could ever come up with…or something. Damn it…I can't even insult Wright well anymore. This is getting bad…no, scratch that. It was already bad…it's getting worse…and will that blasted woman just go back to the check-in counter already before I have to-_

Before Miles could even think about what he was going to do next, a large man in a Jumpy suit came running from the check-in area. Spotting the elderly woman, he picked her up and swung her over his shoulder with one hand, brandished what could only be described as a hand-cannon back toward whence he came, and shouted from within the grinning mask, "You'll never take me alive, coppers! Never!" With that, he stormed off through the security line, chased by a large number of the police force. The rest of the security team working the checkpoint quickly followed suit, leaving only a vast array of stunned passengers and one very confused ID and Ticket Verifying Lady.

Waking out of her daze she turned to Miles and said, "Y-you're…Miles Edgeworth, I take it? I saw one of your cases once. Why don't you…just go on ahead and…gather evidence for this. I get the feeling you're going to be the one to deal with it."

She spoke to him like someone who had just seen…well, what she had just seen. And while he would have done the morally righteous thing and told her that she was **out of her goddamn mind** if she thought he was going to get involved in any of this, he was** not** going to pass up this chance to get through security scot-free.

As he picked up his shed clothing and walked through, all he could hear behind him were cries of, "It's a trap!"

--

He didn't know how it happened, but he had just ceased to care. The first few times the happily armed kangaroo went rushing by him, he had pondered the inanity of it all, gotten frustrated that it had distracted him, and angrily went back to work on his computer. Now…now it felt as ordinary as the delayed flight. Everything around him seemed…normal. All was calm. All was suddenly…peace.

All good things, though, come crashing down eventually.

Two hours later than his scheduled departure time, Edgeworth had finally been called to board the plane. His cravat, suit, and vest were carried easily and neatly under one arm, while his other hand held the handle of his suitcase gently, ready to guide it along if need be. If anyone knew Miles well enough, they would be stunned at the look of serenity upon him. Although, the shock of seeing a relaxed Miles Edgeworth was enough that they could easily mistake it as a sign that he had gone functionally comatose. Edgeworth wouldn't have cared. After all the effort it had taken just to get here, waiting for a while longer was…easy.

As he stood there, unattached to everything around him, his ears picked up a few sentences from a couple of men right behind him. Sentences which, if considered with a bit more wisdom, would have prevented them from being said at all.

"Is that guy seriously carrying a cravat? Who wears those outside of the 19th century?"

"You think he actually wears that? No way. No one is **that **fashionably retarded."

"Why else would he carry it? It's with the rest of his suit. God, cravats are so stupid…"

Impossible…

He didn't…

"Excuse me," Edgeworth said, turning to meet the two gentlemen, "I couldn't help but overhear you two distinguished gents. Was I correct in hearing that there were some disparaging remarks about my cravat in your conversation?"

One man, dressed in a blue suit, shrugged. "Well, yeah. That was what it was all about, really."

The gauntlet thus thrown, Miles's face curled into a wicked smile. "That's what I thought," he said, before pulling his arm back and giving the blue-suited man the biggest backhand that the world had ever seen, causing him to fall over into his companion and for the both of them to come crashing down on the floor.

Pulling him up by his collar, Miles slammed the poor man into a nearby column. Wearing Glare #86, he spoke slowly so as to get his point across the first time. "Listen, you can break down my pride, you can spit on my honor, you can make jests at me, you can insult my mother, you can even club me with a baby seal. But once you insult the **cravat**, that is where the line is drawn. If I ever catch you or your friend berating this marvelous fashion trend again…**I will end you.**" With that, he let go, letting gravity doing the rest of the job.

Grasping his suitcase and walking to the front of the line, he handed his ticket to the girl working the machine. She didn't need to ask; his newly formed comfortable scowl (#8) told her everything she needed to know.

--

_Finally…I can relax…three hours…easy hours…I think I'll take a nap…let myself rest before the heading into the eye of the storm…_

As he stretched out across the three seats (after seeing the display outside, most other passengers elected to sit as far away from him as possible) he thought briefly to the people he'd be leaving behind for a few days. He chuckled quietly, knowing in his heart that he would not miss them one bit.

_"May I have your attention, please. This non-stop flight to Transylvania is now departing. Please fasten your seatbelts, and have a nice flight."_

_…Transylvania? Ha, foolish woman. We're clearly heading to Turnaroundia. It even says so on my ticket…right…here…__**oh FORNICATION!"**_

And as the plane flew off for Transylvanian skies, there was a loud cry of

_**OBJECTIOOOOOOOOOOON!**_

from above the skies of Turnaboutopolis.

"Erk…!" said one Maggey Byrde, nervously looking at her computer screen and her watch, "I sure hope he caught that before he left…!"

_**NEXT TIME: EDGEWORTH VERSUS VAMPIRES. TURNABOUT BLOOD BANK. **_


End file.
